Elemental

 

Score:  A

Directed by Peter Sohn

Starring Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Catherine O'Hara

Running time: 109 minutes

Rated PG

Long Story Short:  Pixar is back in theaters at long last* with Elemental, and it feels just like the good old days.  The premise is among Pixar's cleverest and most effective, using a city of element-people to bring to life both a heart-bursting rom-com as well as a poignant immigrant story.  The animation is as astounding as ever and the humor and emotions will send you soaring just like you remember.  Highly recommended for, like all Pixar films, any audience, from young families to cinephiles.

(*last year's Lightyear was technically Pixar's return to theaters, but I didn't see it and it didn't really seem like a true Pixar film, you know?)

Element City is a special place, one that, over the years, has adopted - but not yet fully integrated -  a colorful set of people in the form of elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.  Ember (Lewis) lives with her parents in the Fire section of the city where they run the neighborhood bodega.  Ember is set to inherit the shop one day, but, appropriate to her element, must first overcome a quick and powerful temper.  Another obstacle to her taking over the Fireplace soon arrives when a dreaded water leak develops in the basement.  There is only so much that Ember can do by herself, so she is forced to trust in the other elements in the city around her for help.  It's a test of compatibility in a city long kept separated out of fear and ignorance.

Elemental is a great animated film with all of Pixar's typically great visual design, cleverness, and emotional impact, and its story is particularly well-suited to the animation format.  As you've likely glimpsed from trailers, Pixar's latest provides a nice, bright, poppy color palette for its summer release.  What I only truly appreciated in the theater, though, was the extraordinary texture effects of the elements, particularly Fire and Water (the two main elements in the film).  Pixar has again made the seemingly impossible appear effortless with the natural blurriness and flicker of flames and the smooth but erratic-seeming flow of drips of water.  The idea of elements as people (a bit like Inside Out's emotions) also leads to much of the humor, which is very well done.  Most of it happens naturally, within the flow of "normal" element-city life: water's tendency to cry and the unique products of the Fireplace were some of my favorites.  It's not all happy, bright colors and jokes, though: Pixar makes Element City parallel to real cities in its incorporation of "immigrant" communities (exemplified here by Fire).  The differences among the elements naturally lead to this comparison - and to the implicit segregation - and the effect is moving but not unduly heavy.

Helping to balance out the immigrant themes - some of Pixar's most serious yet - is the rom-com aspect of the story.  You'll find many of the usual genre beats: the awkward first meeting, the jaunt around town together, the traumatic split before the final act, etc.  And just as the use of elements is a good illustration of immigration, the very format of animation turns out to be a great one for romantic comedy.  The characters in Elemental are as expressive as live-action humans, thanks to Pixar's artists, but we're still watching clearly non-human beings.  That allows you to more easily project your own mental images into the story, as rom-coms are so good at inviting us to do.  With a screen packed full of imagination, audiences might therefore have even more going on in their heads than during the usual Pixar adventure.  Speaking of characters, it was nice to see Pixar turn to a cast of (relative) unknowns for the voice acting.  Of course, it's great to give new talent a chance to shine (or rather, to be heard) but it also doubles down on the audience's impressions of the characters or story not being colored by familiar personas - via sight or sound.  Finally, Elemental's animation also allows the action to more closely match the intensity and wonder of the relationship's emotions, from a spectacular underwater date to a perilous and tearful (but ultimately happy!) finale.

***

It was so great to see a Pixar movie in the theater again!  The last time I saw one was 2019's Toy Story 4, which feels like forever ago.  While the premise, or the part of it I got from the trailer, didn't grab my interest at first, I knew immediately that I had to go see it - and, just like most Pixar films, it exceeded my expectations.  Part of my enthusiasm could be the excitement of the theatrical experience but looking back, even when it occasionally seems that a part of the story fell flat or wasn't going anywhere, the movie either quickly got back on track or turned the weakness into a key development later on.  Also: Pixar continues to include a short story before the main film, this time about Up's Carl and dog, Dug.  It's one of the best yet!  So be sure to see this one in a theater while you can.  Amid a sea of summer sequels - even the good ones - it's so refreshing to see another Pixar hit.

* By Pixar - http://www.impawards.com/2023/elemental_ver10.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73800022

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

Score:  B+

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson

Starring Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Oscar Isaac, et. al.

Running time: 140 minutes

Rated PG

Long Story Short:  Spider-Man leaps back into the fray, this time in animated form, in a sequel to 2018's Into the Spider-Verse.  Like that film, this one focuses on a theme of multiverses, where there's not just one Spider-Man but many.  We get to focus on Miles and Gwen, here, mostly, and their personal stories are well done.  While there's good action, too, the plot is just OK.  Put all that aside, though: the visuals alone are worth the price of admission, with dazzling color and thoughtful detail and styles.

More than a year after Into the Spider-Verse introduced the Spider-People of multiple universes, Miles (Moore) and Gwen (Steinfeld) find themselves alone again in their own universes.  The multiverse will not let them go so easily, however.  Gwen meets a new team of multiverse Spiders while battling a villain, and Miles confronts a different villain who can open portals at will himself.  The two good friends are joyful when they finally reunite, but circumstances are much different than when they last met.  Both are dealing with difficult personal problems at home as a result of their superhero activities, and both have urgent Spider-missions, ones that are not necessarily aligned with each other.  They must learn more about the wild multiverse they've become a part of, soon, though, and rely on both new and old friends to avert disaster.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a solid, very entertaining sequel to the 2018 animated original film.  By far the best part of it is the astonishing visuals, though it is weighed down a bit by a too-familiar plot.  Although the style is much different, Across the Spider-Verse is just as jaw-dropping as the best Pixar animation.  While it mostly has a fairly realistic physical sense, the colors in particular are quite malleable and serve as the most interesting part of most of the film, whether through sheer beauty or emphasis of the emotional tone/mood of a scene.  It has a distinctive style throughout, but it also retains plenty of flexibility, too.  Just remarkable, and begging to be seen on the big screen.  There is plenty of action, of course, being a superhero movie, and the animation is both particularly appropriate for Spider-Man (with all his web-based "flying", "lassoing" and other acrobatics) and helps suspend your disbelief.  The action can go on a bit too long, and one particularly wild chase is a little overboard, but that's mostly quibbling - it's a lot of fun.  Speaking of too long, the film overall is also too long, even if for the noble intention of trying to pay as much attention to the personal parts as the action.

The characters and plot of Across the Spider-Verse are well-developed, although the results are somewhat mixed.  To start with, the whole multiverse concept is getting a bit tiring.  The current series of live-action Marvel films uses it as its main connecting theme; last year's Oscar winner Everything Everywhere... was built on it, and, of course, the 2018 animated original used it, too.  There was always going to be some element of the multiverse involved (Miles and Gwen had to get back together somehow!), but the film leans into it even harder this time.  Even the switch of focus away from the villain and onto the team of Spider-People - who ostensibly should be good but hide a more dubious goal - feels overly familiar.  This is made up for in good measure by a solid family story and structure for both Miles and Gwen - and in part, it's because we don't get the way-too-familiar Aunt May/Uncle Ben dynamic.  Miles, in particular, feels very well-rounded here.  An adult Peter Parker, voiced by funnyman Jake Johnson, is a bright spot again, basically just serving as comic relief (and now with baby in tow).  On the other hand, Steinfeld's Gwen and Isaac's Miguel grated on me a bit.  I think it's because they've both recently starred in live-action Marvel series, too, and their usual personas are on display.  Even though it's only their voices, I still felt like I was watching recycled roles.

***

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse vaults to the top of my superhero list for the year, thanks to Marvel producing - unprecedentedly - back-to-back disappointments (Ant-Man 3 and Guardians 3 - maybe it's curse of the 3s this year?).  It was a very fun time at the theater, even if I don't feel gushing about it.  That may in part be because my attention wandered a bit more than usual; and I haven't seen the 2018 original since it was in theaters five years ago.  Still, I highly recommend it (family-friendly, too!).  DC will have the next few cracks at the superhero genre, starting with The Flash.  I'll also be seeing another animated movie again, Elemental, quite soon - my first new Pixar in theaters since Toy Story 4 in 2019.  Hopefully the summer will bring more movie goodness!

* By https://twitter.com/SpiderVerse/status/1651254816025313281/photo/1, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72536149